Australian Antarctic Division: Leading Australia’s Antarctic Program

Antarctic video gallery

Nuyina landing barges

Nuyina landing barges

Video transcript

TEXT BOX: Two barges for the icebreaker Nuyina are being built in Tasmania to support Antarctic resupply.

ROB BRYSON (Manager – Antarctic Modernisation Branch): These barges are the primary link between the ship and the shore. We don’t have wharves or jetties in Antarctica, the ship doesn’t come alongside anywhere, so we have to use the barges to transfer all our cargo ashore and all our breakbulk containers and all our equipment.

TEXT BOX: Each barge can carry 45 tonne loads of containers, vehicles and other cargo.

ROB BRYSON: The great feature of these barges is their ability to ride up on the beach and discharge their cargo straight on to the shore, so that’s a tremendous capability that we’re building alongside the Nuyina and bringing into service.

TEXT BOX: The barges are being built by Taylor Bros, who have been crafting vessels for 83 years.

PHIL TAYLOR (Director – Taylor Bros): One of the first job I ever did for the Antarctic Division was in 1980 when we converted the first landing barges they had. They had four outboards strapped across the back of the barge and they were virtually a square brick. They were pretty uncontrollable so we turned them into a jet powered barge.

ROB BRYSON: The barges directly complement Nuyina because they’re made for each other. So from the ground up, the design’s been complementary. Seeing this design finally come to fruition is fantastic and a great achievement for all involved in the process today.

PHIL TAYLOR: We’ve had a lot of experience with Antarctica projects and we’ve learnt a lot out of working in a cold climate. Yeah there’s always challenges and that’s good, that’s what we like here, doing something different.

Craig Butsch, Returning Officer, Casey station:G’day, my name’s Craig Butsch, I’m 46 years old, from Darwin, originally from Melbourne, and I’m down here at Casey station with the Bureau of Meteorology as the senior meteorological observer.

The Casey polling booth has a view over the sea ice.

Sam Sanders:So we’ll be voting later on today. We’ve set up the booth down at the wharf, and we’re ready to roll.

This year a total of 49 expeditioners are registered to vote as ‘Antarctic electors’.

The AEC emails ballot papers for each voter to the Returning Officers, who print them out.

Craig Butsch:So people down here at Casey will be voting with a paper ballot. They’ll be placing it in the secured ballot box, and the next day myself and my assistant Sam will be counting the votes and then phoning them through to the AEC in Hobart.

Sam Sanders:Yeah look, I think it’s really nice to be involved in what’s going on back in Australia, and voting is a nice way of doing that, and it’s good to be involved.

Craig Butsch:It’s a little bit cold today, so we won’t be having a sausage sizzle but we will be having brunch. We’ll get our sausages, but it’ll be an inside-brunch-sausage instead of an outside-democracy-sausage-sizzle-sausage. (laughs)

Southern Ocean to the Somme

New Centre for Antarctic, Remote and Maritime Medicine

New Centre for Antarctic, Remote and Maritime Medicine

Video transcript

Antarctica is a remote and extreme environment.

There’s only a single doctor on each Australian station to provide medical care over winter.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Jeff Ayton “In Antarctica we are isolated for nine months of the year and we’ve had to deal with anything from mental health issues right through to major trauma in isolation.”

The skills developed by Antarctic doctors will now be extended to other remote and regional areas through the Centre for Antarctic, Remote and Maritime Medicine (CARMM).

It will bring together a network of specialists to support healthcare in isolated communities.

Advanced telehealth systems will play a key role.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Jeff Ayton “We’ve got access to real time monitoring but also near real time and real time imaging coming through. Providing the necessary support 24/7 to the distant doctor and the community that they are serving.”

The Centre will also provide accredited training and education pathways for generalist health practitioners.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Jeff Ayton “CARMM has been a long time coming and this is fantastic and an amazing opportunity to bring together for Tasmania and Australia, a cold climate academic centre of excellence which will deliver health care, training, education and research and innovation well into the future.”

CARMM is a partnership between the Australian and Tasmanian Governments and the University of Tasmania.

A glimpse beneath the ice

Video transcript

But little is known about what lies beneath this mass of ice, whether it’s bedrock or water.

Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi “By understanding how much ocean is under the glacier we can then understand how susceptible they are to climate change.”

For the first time researchers have found a network of lakes underneath the glacier using seismic testing.

They set off a series of small explosions two metres below the surface of the glacier, sending out sound waves.

Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi “That will echo off different layers in the ice and the bottom of the ice. Then we have geophones, that are basically microphones on the surface, that will listen to that sound and that will tell us how thick it is and the characteristics of the ice and the ocean below the ice.”

Solar Farm at Casey

Solar Farm at Casey

Video transcript

TEXT BOX: The first Australian solar farm in Antarctica has been switched on at Casey research station.

MARK PEKIN – INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEER. We’re installing some solar panels, primarily to help with the power on station and reduce the amount of diesel that we burn.

TEXT BOX: 105 solar panels are mounted on the northern wall of the station’s store.

TEXT BOX: They provide 30 kilowatts of renewable energy into the station’s power grid.

MARK PEKIN: Back in the real world the sun typically goes overhead. Down here at the very low latitudes in the southern hemisphere, the sun typically doesn’t get much above the horizon, so the wall of the building gets more sunshine than the roof of the building.

It’s certainly a lot windier down here than what you’d find when normal solar panels are installed. And that’s another value of having it on the wall. It’s quite snug in there. And the panels are designed for some fairly serious wind loads.

DOREEN McCURDY - ENGINEERING SERVICES SUPERVISOR: Temperature is a big thing as well. The guys are having to do really fiddly little screws and nuts and when their hands are cold they need to take breaks and put their hands in pockets with pocket warmers to warm up.

Each panel takes about 20 minutes to install. When we have cold or really windy days the guys come inside and pull cables or install cable trays.

TEXT BOX: The panels will help cut fuel costs and emissions and boost the station’s capacity at peak times.

MARK PEKIN: There are no doubt some learnings that we’ll get for this and we’ll look at what that can do for some of our other stations as well.

Masdar credit: This project was made possible by Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company), a global leader in the commercialisation and deployment of renewable energy and clean technologies in more than 25 countries around the world to address global sustainability challenges.